In colonial America the citizen Jury, and its nullification power, was the original protection of speech. Government speech restrictions could be nullified by the jury.

A Colonial Example From our Tradition of Free Speech and Press
In 1735, jury nullification decided the celebrated seditious libel trial of John Peter Zenger. His newspaper had openly criticized the royal governor of New York. The current law made it a crime to publish any statement (true or false) criticizing public officials, laws, or the government in general.

The Bill of Rights guarantees both freedom of speech and trial by jury. While it is true that, originally, the Bill of Rights was not widely accepted as applying to state governments; it would even then have applied to any Federal trials.

A polemic article on the subject
The Constitutional Relationship Between the People and the Law

Yes I mostly agree. My information was mostly to help clear up confusion about whether a treaty overruled the constitution or not. I guess if there was no national law, then new state laws might prevail. However, that is just a guess.

Sonny Yatsen wrote:
Nowadays, Executive Agreements are the norm in foreign policy and not Treaties.

A treaty that is ratified by 2/3rds of the Senate gains constitutional authority. Among other things it allows the federal government to legislate in areas which would otherwise fall within the exclusive authority of the states.

My interest in this subject stems from being a democracy activist. Most U.S. states have effectively outlawed private member based citizen parties.
SEE Quote from 1927

"Here in the last generation, a development has taken place which finds an analogy nowhere else. American parties have ceased to be voluntary associations like trade unions or the good government clubs or the churches. They have lost the right freely to determine how candidates shall be nominated and platforms framed, even who shall belong to the party and who shall lead it. The state legislatures have regulated their structure and functions in great detail."

Source: American Parties and Elections,
by Edward Sait, 1927 (Page 174)
Quoted from: The tyranny of the two-party system,
by Lisa Jane Disch c2002

George H.W. Bush signed the Copenhagen Document of the Helsinki Accords that states in part: (7.6) - respect the right of individuals and groups to establish, in full freedom, their own political parties or other political organizations and provide such political parties and organizations with the necessary legal guarantees to enable them to compete with each other on a basis of equal treatment before the law and by the authorities;... However it has not been ratified by the Senate.

Ref. Treaty Clause
One of three types of international accord.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Clause

In Missouri v. Holland, the Supreme Court ruled that the power to make treaties under the
U.S. Constitution is a power separate from the other enumerated powers of the federal
government, and hence the federal government can use treaties to legislate in areas which
would otherwise fall within the exclusive authority of the states.

wampus (1932) writes:
Yup. Trolling. Don't trust the government? Smart. Don't trust some guy with a website? Troll.
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I don't think this is about trusting Julian Assange. It is about trusting the AFP's reporting of statements by Swedish prosecutors.

I believe that most Slashdoters, including myself, favor Wikileaks. It is my understanding that Julian Assange's primary job is to promote Wikileaks. At the present time it would appear that he is doing an excellent job! I hope it stays that way.

EdIII (1114411) writes:
On a serious note, I keep hearing that the next World Wars will be fought over resources.
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And fighting wars uses a fair amount of resources. Is that ironic or what?

Constitutionally, the U.S. Jury is not about a Judge's view of fairness. It functioned as a citizen check on the power of government. I will not comment on the actions of the individual Juror in this case, but I wonder if her paper will include some background on the original constitutional function of jury trials.

The Constitutional Relationship Between the People and the Law

So you just discovered that Adam Smith's "invisible hand" can pick your pocket?

RE: Political Party names

In most other nations ( other than the U.S. ) the significance of a ballot label's "imagery" can be limited by the ability of a political party to enforce party platforms.

In the U.S.(in general) the name of a political party is just a ballot label, and any individual politician can run under it in a primary (nominating) election. In most other democratic nations, a political party is a private member based organization that "owns" a ballot label and chooses politicians to run under that label. Since politicians are responsible the their party, a member based party can, and sometimes does, write a political platform, containing specific issues that it's individual politicians can be required to support.

The U.S. has not ratified the Copenhagen Document of the Helsinki Accords which states in part: (7.6) - respect the right of individuals and groups to establish, in full freedom, their own political parties or other political organizations and provide such political parties and organizations with the necessary legal guarantees to enable them to compete with each other on a basis of equal treatment before the law and by the authorities;..

Can You Define What a Political Party is?

Our Glorious National Committees: Ever wonder what they do?

I assume this peoples Senate is some political body in the Peoples Republic of China. Had you been from the U.S. you would never have used such a term.

You obviously did not read what I wrote, or didn't understand what I wrote. You apparently think that an international document signed by a U.S. president becomes Constitutionally protected. It doers not. It requires ratification by 2/3 of Senate.

You also seem to be under the impression that I sit on the U.S. Supreme Court! Send your complaints to SCOTUS not me.

We can't argue about my opinions unless you actually read and understand what I wrote.

commodore64_love
the new Executive Agreement effectively does this to the People's Constitution:

I wish that was true! However; as an example, President George H.W. Bush has signed something called The Copenhagen Document. The Copenhagen Document of the Helsinki Accords states in part:

(7.6) - respect the right of individuals and groups to establish, in full freedom, their own political parties or other political organizations and provide such political parties and organizations with the necessary legal guarantees to enable them to compete with each other on a basis of equal treatment before the law and by the authorities;..

I wish that had constitutional authority, but it does not! The Senate has not ratified it. Not to mention that the SCOTUS can use the literal, historical, liberal. conservative, living, and total joke, interpretations of the U.S. Constitutions in their rulings.

See: Copenhagen Document
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_access

RE: Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution: The Supremacy Clause

The fact that fully ratified treaties have constitutional authority, became more significant to me when I discovered that President George H.W. Bush had signed something called The Copenhagen Document.

The Copenhagen Document of the Helsinki Accords states in part:
(7.6) - respect the right of individuals and groups to establish, in full freedom, their own political parties or other political organizations and provide such political parties and organizations with the necessary legal guarantees to enable them to compete with each other on a basis of equal treatment before the law and by the authorities;..

I would love to have the Senate ratify it, and have that treaty become Constitutional law.
See: Copenhagen Document
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_access

The only difference here is that while Ubisoft succeeded (so far) at keeping (fully playable) pirated copies from surfacing, EA has not. If you look around, you will even find a scene release of C&C4 which from what I read, uses a server emulator to handle all the basic requests/calls made by the C&C4 game client. Assassin's Creed 2 on the other hand has the DRM integrated into the maps and mission data thereby making it far more tedious and time consuming to crack.

This suggests that EA did not implement the DRM nearly as well as Ubisoft. Not only that, but with Ubisoft's DRM, your game will literally save-state if the connection drops so you can pick up where you left off. You don't lose any progress whatsoever (I've even had the game crash to desktop from a Vsync bug and I didn't lose any progress since auto-saving is so frequent). This really makes EA's DRM seem like a "cheap knockoff" of what Ubisoft has done.

Hey Zorro, the majority of people do in fact shut down their PC's daily. Just because you choose not to doesn't make this a "bad" idea.